Angry Lead Skies

79

I breathed, "This isn't the time," because she'd snuggled up like she wanted to get really friendly. It hadn't ever gotten this complicated when I was running with Morley. Then Singe proved that I had misjudged her again.

She pointed back past the heap of possum and muskrat hides.

Several Visitors were up to something back there. Singe had pressed against me to make sure the invisibility spell concealed us both.

I whispered, "What the hell are they doing? They're not supposed to be here." One of the Visitors had his arm in a sling. Another seemed to have a broken leg. Evidently the Maskers hadn't been able to work any medical magic.

Every Visitor carried at least one gray fetish and studied it intently.

I whispered, "There're too many of them." There were more here than the Masker four. I couldn't get them all in sight at once but I definitely counted at least five Visitors. Though it was hard to tell one from another, even when the Visitor hailed from Evas' crew. Unless you charmed them out of their silver suits.

I whispered, "We're still blocks away from where John Stretch said they're hiding."

Singe murmured, "Quit whispering so much," then added a thought I'd had already and didn't want to be true. "Maybe they were warned about us coming. Maybe they are here because they expected us to go to the place where we were told that they would be hiding."

Maybe. Because in TunFaire nothing ought to surprise you. The possible will happen. The impossible takes only a few minutes longer.

In this case the probabilities were apparent. Certain overly friendly Visitor ladies, desperate to get a ride home, had conned simple old Garrett into returning some Visitor fetishes they said they'd need in order to sneak in and join Evas in her adventures with Morley Dotes at The Palms. Taking advantage of simple old Garrett's understandable and righteous desire to rectify a near-cosmic injustice.

If they got away I hoped the girls were dim enough to take the Goddamn Parrot with them.

Smirk. I'd have to remember to call the place The Joy House next time I dropped in at Morley's. Smirk.

The extra Visitors lurking here had to be Lastyr and Noodiss, erstwhile missionaries. Just had to be. Because no Visitor would be going home if they couldn't all work together, and the Maskers would have been gone already if they'd gotten reinforcements from the old country. The women in particular had to be extremely cooperative with the others. They were at everyone's mercy.

Disdaining Singe's advice, I whispered. "You watch them. I'll keep an eye on the street." The confusion out there had begun to commence to begin to get ready to head on out somewhere else.

Bic and his pal resumed moving, though confusion didn't cease being their guiding spirit. They faded away.

I expected them back. You cast around a bit but you always return to the point where your track evaporated, to hunt for the one thing you missed the last time you looked.

Minutes later Singe murmured a grand understatement. "We should leave. Sooner or later they will stumble over us in spite of this invisibility amulet."

"Or they might have some way to tell if an invisibility spell is being used anywhere nearby." If I invented an invisibility-maker I'd sure try to come up with a way to tell if somebody else was using something like it around me.

"Or they might hear you whispering."

That, too.

We'd come to the Embankment to find Visitors. Although this wasn't quite the situation I'd hoped for. This wasn't good. This didn't fit in with my half-assed plans at all.

Singe was spot on about whispering. But she was a tad off when it came to who would do the eavesdropping.

Yikes! Here came Bic Gonlit and his threadbare stormwarden buddy, hustling like they were being driven by one of the wizard's spooky winds. Their trackers and henchmen scampered along behind them, confused and alert and able to keep up only because Bic had those stubby little pins.

The flotilla's course ran straight toward me.

I poked Singe, indicated that she should peek through the airhole. Once she'd done so we got up on our hind feet and, chest to chest, in careful lockstep, began to ease along the brick wall, toward the cover of another mound of hides. We found it necessary to freeze every few steps because the Visitors had become extremely nervous, suddenly. They were inclined to jump at the slightest sound.

They had to suspect that they had trouble in their hip pocket.

Several Visitors, fetishes extended before them, suddenly rushed the hide pile Singe and I had abandoned. Bic and his cohorts were causing a disturbance outside. And Singe and I hadn't gotten but a dozen feet away. So we froze. And shivered. And held our breaths. And hoped nobody stumbled into us.

The Visitor with his arm in a sling missed running into me by scant inches.

Tension mounted amongst the Visitors. The advent of danger reawakened the bad feelings between the Maskers and Kip's pals. I could sense just enough to tell that the Maskers blamed Lastyr and Noodiss for everything. Kip's friends blamed the Maskers for zipping all over the sky, thereby alerting the savages to their presence.

Lastyr and Noodiss had abandoned the altruism that had brought them to TunFaire. In fact, prolonged exposure to our fair flower of a city had turned them bitter and cynical.

Imagine that.

Singe and I continued to move, teensy baby steps, then with more vigor once we realized that the people outside intended to come inside.

Visitors began flying all over the place. Two quite literally. I didn't see any ropes or wires. "Keep moving," I told Singe, in what I thought would be an inaudible whisper.

Visitors froze.

Something had changed. The Visitors were alert in a whole different way.

The Visitors then unfroze, every man jack getting busy with fetish boxes.

Those guys needed bandoliers to carry all the fetishes they had. Evidently every task imaginable could be managed with the right gray box.

Two Visitors headed our way, weaving slow, serpentine courses, zeroing in.

Bic's gang poured through the open door.

Big surprises happened. For everybody.

The confusion attained an epic level.

At first it looked like it would be a walk for the startled Visitors. Thugs went down left and right, exactly as easily as I had in my first several encounters with Masker magic.

Then Bic came through the doorway.

The Visitor sorcery didn't affect Little Bitty Big Boy.

Bic selected a paddle meant for stirring the contents of a curing vat. He took a swing at the nearest silver figure, which happened to belong to the Masker with the broken leg.

The Visitor rewarded Bic with a beaten-sheep sort of bleat.

The shabby stormwarden stepped inside. And instantly called down some of that old-fashioned thunder and lightning, the ability to control which gave stormwardens their name.

Weather magic is the flashiest and most obviously destructive power possessed by our lords of the Hill—and the most common.

Hides flew. Vats exploded. People shrieked. Bic Gonlit rose ten feet into the air, spinning faster and faster as he did so. The stormwarden followed, spinning himself. But he threw off spells like the sparks coming off one of those pinwheel fireworks.

I told Singe, "We really need to take ourselves somewhere else."

The game looked like it was just starting to get serious.

"I thought you wanted to find the Visitors... "

"We found them. Now let's take advantage of the fact that nobody here has us at the head of their to-do list right now."